1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to arrangements for indicating the presence of a “target” such as an individual. More particularly, the invention relates to arrangements for communicating “status” information describing at least the target's present and future ability to communicate with the entity (such as by returning a call).
2. Related Art
Businesses are always looking for ways to develop better rapport between their employees and their customers, to improve overall customer service. One way of achieving this rapport is to facilitate a customer's communication with a given employee. For example, a customer may wish to easily communicate with a particular plumbing expert at a large hardware store on an ongoing basis. The customer's wish may result from a personal trust, or may be based on the particular employees knowledge or expertise.
Conventionally, businesses provide voicemail service so that customers may attempt to reach their trusted employee. However, voicemail systems cannot provide the customer with a reliable indication of whether the employee is in or is reachable in the near future. Moreover, a voicemail message may not be often checked or the employee may be on vacation, resulting in a delayed return call that causes the customer to be dissatisfied.
It is recognized that employees may be instructed to keep their voicemail greetings current so that callers will be warned of any delays or absences. However, this instruction is not always followed because it requires the employee to remember to do so. Moreover, employees may be negligent in checking voicemail, also causing delays that are frustrating to customers who call. Human error or negligence can thus be responsible for diminishing customer satisfaction.
A common alternative to voicemail systems is to have a customer's call forwarded to a central operator who can then explicitly page the employee who is being called. However, this paging practices requires human intervention, and forces the calling customer to wait, regardless of whether or not the employee responds to the page. Further, employment of a live central operator increases personnel costs, a result that is contrary to the intent of automated voicemail systems.
Various features have been proposed in the art. In reverse chronological order by issue date or publication date:
U.S. Pat. No. 6,654,815 (Goss et al.) discloses a contact server for a call center in which customers use various communications technologies to submit a call-back request via the Internet; however, Goss' call-back request arrangement does not appear to tell the customer whether the called employee is present or can call back soon.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0112956 (Brown et al.) discloses a system that automatically forwards calls to a backup party selected in accordance with a context for the call; however, Brown's arrangement does not appear to tell the caller whether the called employee is present or can call back soon.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,574,480 (Foladare et al.) discloses an arrangement for paging an intelligently chosen destination device when a call or other communication is received, based on the identity of a customer and the reason for the communication; however, the Foladare's arrangement does not appear to inherently provide information back to the caller.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0145559 (Sullivan) discloses how a person's location may be tracked using a global positioning system (GPS) device; however, Sullivan's device does not solve the larger problem of communicating information about the person's presence to a calling customer.
Finally, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0085701 (Parsons et al.) discloses a unified communication management system that maintains presence data relating to a person's location, and uses that presence data and context data to automatically forward calls from one of the person's communication's devices to another or to another individual. Parsons' paragraph [0036] focuses on manual and automatic ways in which the person's location may be tracked. However, Parsons' arrangement does not appear to tell the caller whether the called person is present or can call back soon.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an arrangement that would allow customers to quickly and automatically receive a reliable, timely and accurate indication of whether an employee is present at a given time, and when the customer might expect the employee to call back. Preferably, the arrangement would provide this information without requiring the affirmative action of the employee being sought, to remove human error.